Before Happily Ever After
by Fairy Empress
Summary: Tragedy struck and Kari is made to believe her daughter is dead, who is alive and living with T.K. What is going on?


AN: Since Scandalous is working on her side story; we decided to put our CCS story on hold for a little bit. I had an idea for a new Digimon story, that wasn't like the others I have written. It will not have any Digimon in it; it's not going to be that type of story. Pure angst and such. With Dakari, Takari (yeah!), and that stuff. Also, to the people who have seen the last episode of Zero Two (which both me and Scandalous have), the kids it shows and the DD adult relationship/marriages will be in here. So just to let you know, I will have Matt & Sora together and Ken & Yolei together (for those who have not seen it, those are the only Digi-Destined that actually marry each other). I am doing a spin off on what I saw, since it didn't show who anyone else was married to, so I am going to draw my own conclusions. I also changed the ages of some of the children of the DD to suit my own purposes. On with the story….  
AN2: The names of the kids are not related to either my or Scandalous's story, since we seem to keep using the same names, which are favorites of ours. Also if you wonder why I keep talking about Scandalous, as in the other written known as Scandalous Behavior, it's cause she's my sister. The blood kind. Along with our other sisters, Pitch Black Sunshine and Raven 0'Ryan, both are also writers on FF.Net. Four female writers and only one computer, life is a torment, which is why we are going to be getting another one soon.  
DISC: I do not, nor have I ever claimed to own Digimon, or its characters. Only the characters I create are strictly mine.  
  
Before Happily Ever After  
Prologue- Six Years Ago  
  
Written by: Fairy Empress  
thefairyempress@yahoo.com  
  
~ * ~ * ~ *  
  
Tokyo Memorial Hospital  
  
A blond man, his hair even more in disarray than usual, was holding his head between his hands as he sat in one of the large waiting rooms on the fifteenth floor of the hospital. Sunlight came in from the large windows behind him, as if to make the patiently waiting family members to patients see that even if something was going on in their lives the sun still shown over Japan.   
  
If any of the nurses looked closer than the simple peek as they passed by in the hurry to get to one room or another, they would have noticed and recognized the man instantly. His face was one of the top seen in the world, something that came with the fame of being a top Hollywood actor. Only thirty-six years old, he could pass for someone in his twenties, he carried himself and his looks well. The sun-kissed blond hair and usually clear blue eyes were now detached and confused.   
  
Takeru Takaishi had been called late yesterday morning in his penthouse apartment in upper class Bel Air in California, where he had been arguing with his teenage son over the fact that he was too young for some club where all his friends were going to be. The fifteen year old was determined to get his way yesterday and only a call had saved him from being grounded.   
  
The call had come from Yolei Inoue Ichijouji, the wife of Ken Ichijouji, and best friend of Hikari Kamiya. He had been so startled when the first words out of Yolei's mouth had been Kari was in the hospital. She gave him very little details, only telling him to hurry and that Kari needed him.  
  
How long had he waited to hear those words? That the girl who had been his best friend since they were toddlers, since they were eight in the Digital World, then again when they were eleven up until high school graduation when she went to her photography school and he had been accepted to play basketball at UCLA. All of their family and friends got scattered that it wasn't until a reunion years later, when they brought their own kids into the Digital World did they get to see the changes years of too long in between phone calls and ignoring e-mails, had gotten most of them to be sorely out of touch with what was going on in each other's lives.   
  
It had surprised him when he had saw Kari, her hair past her shoulders with a son of her own, the same age as his own, standing next to her with the whistle around his neck that Kari used to wear when she was his age. Kari introduced him to her son, Kyle Andrews, the son of her and a guy she had married when she got out of photography. They were divorced, and Kyle rarely saw him since her ex-husband was so busy all the time. Kari had met his own son, Terrence 'Terry', who was almost six years old, just like her own son but unlike Kari, his wife that he had met in college had died two years ago from cancer. Kari had been her normal sweet self, so understanding that inside it made him realize all those feelings he had for her for so long weren't gone, just in hiding.   
  
Things had gotten so tense between the two that one night, a night he never forgot; they had let themselves know each other physically. A new script had called him away after that and Kari was busy with her own photography career. It was strange and almost unreal when her son and his had become best friends from the first day. Unlike their parents, they wouldn't have the problem of falling for one another knowing they would never be together since fate wasn't in their favor.  
  
Then a month after he and Kari had been together, no one could have surprised him more than when he got a wedding announcement that said Kari was marrying Daisuke 'Davis' Motomiya. It was like someone had reached in and tore his heart from his chest. He noticed he hadn't been invited to the wedding, something he was sure Kari and Davis didn't want to go over since Davis never did get over the fact that Kari was with him more than with Davis. Now, it seemed Davis was the better man.  
  
Davis had a son from a first marriage as well, his name was Derek, and he became Kari's stepson and Kyle's stepbrother. Like a real family they were seen everywhere and when his older brother, Matt, had tried talking to him about having a get together he would always come up with something to get him out of it. It hurt, even after all the time of knowing he could never truly be with her, it still hurt that Davis was with her. Holding her, loving her, and being able to be there for her when that was all he ever wanted.  
  
Not even sure how things had gotten to the point they were now, only thing he could do was hang his head and breathe. The feeling of anger and frustration so intense he feared he would let go and do something rash, something to pay back the years lost to him, for the suffering of not knowing and for the fact the only girl he had ever loved had just tried to kill his daughter, their daughter.  
  
~ * ~  
  
Daisuke Motomiya still relished the sight of the mighty and strong Takeru 'T.K' Takaishi's face going from the California tan to almost ghost white when he explained to him about his daughter. The one with Davis's last name, the one that was nine years old and in serious condition and the one that Kari had tried to kill.  
  
Oh, that wasn't exactly true, in fact it was closer to the truth that Kari was trying her damnest to kill herself only it hadn't turned out that way and now her precious child, the one that should have his blood, his DNA, running through her veins instead of Takaishi's was laying on a bed almost in a coma.   
  
A grim smile was on his lips when he thought back to what Kari had been doing. Getting away from him, leaving him for good. Not that he would ever let her, she was his. Not Takaishi's and not that stupid ex-husband of hers but his. He was the one that had her now, had her for nine years and he was damned if he was going to give her up so that she would run straight into Takeru's open arms.   
  
When hell freezes over, Davis thought.  
  
It should have been the marriage that Fairy Tales were based on. The perfect innocent and sweet Hikari Kamiya marrying the Courageous Davis Motomiya, who had been in love with her since they were eleven. But no, she couldn't have possibly let it be that way. She had to ruin it by sleeping with T.K. a month before they had gotten married and given birth, eight months into their marriage, to the little girl with T.K.'s eyes that the moment he saw her all he could think of was that she was going to destroy everything. Indeed, the little girl, with Kari's light brown hair and T.K.'s eyes did destroy all his plans. Because the second that child was born all of Kari's attention was directed at her son, her daughter, and his son. Not at him, ever fully at him. At times he was even jealous of his own son that got Kari's smiles and laughter.   
  
He had let it known to Kari he would not tolerate the little girl. He had wanted her to give her up for adoption; the look in her eyes told him clearly that she would rather die than do that to her daughter. Besides that now everyone thought that the girl was his, he couldn't very well make her do that, now could he? So he let it go. At least until she was five and acted so much like Takeru that he had come close to smacking her for no other reason than that she wasn't his. He could tolerate Kyle, he looked exactly like Kari with her hair and her eyes, but anytime that little girl would turn those baby blues on him he felt like this was hell he was living in. All because she wasn't his and her mother was.  
  
So after nine years of abuse, verbal mainly, Kari had decided end it all. Maybe in her unrational mind, brought to the point where she only wanted the fighting to end did she believe that killing herself was the only answer. When she had taken off in her Jeep, she didn't realize until she was at full speed and the car out of control that her daughter was in the back seat, asleep. A habit of sneaking into car's something Kari couldn't break her of, the little girl saying that she liked the inside of the car as if that was an explanation. The Jeep had gone off the small cliff and threw her daughter into the rear car door at full force. Thankfully a sand doom had taken most of the crash, and Kari wasn't so badly hurt that she couldn't get her daughter out of the car to be beside it. Holding her daughter's blood red head was how he had found her and called the ambulance five minutes later. Tears running down her face and the look in her brown-red eyes told him that she blamed him.   
  
Brought to the ambulance, Kari was treated for head trauma and given a lot of drugs. She wasn't told anything about her daughter and Davis had done what he wanted to do for years and that was to make the little girl go out of his life.   
  
So while his wife was so drugged and her daughter was now out of danger, he had brought himself to tell Takeru, who he had let Yolei call for then told her to get her rest. He didn't want anyone to know what he was about to do, or have anyone question it. They couldn't if they didn't know, now could they?  
  
He told Takeru, relishing it when Takeru turned white and asked how his daughter was doing. Davis's lies were in place, Takeru thought that Kari was getting back at him by being a horrible mother to the girl and now had almost killed her. And when Kari woke up the lie would be complete. He would have Kari and that little nuisance in his life would disappear, along with any hope of Takeru ever opening his arms or bed to Kari.  
  
He left the blond in the waiting room, going to his wife's room and waited for the doctor to leave before entering it and closing the door, sitting next to the bed on a chair.  
  
"I have something that I know is going to be unbearable, Kari, but the doctor's thought it would be better for you to understand coming from me." Davis lied smoothly.  
  
Lifting her head and looking at him with drugged vision, Kari blinked.  
  
"I am afraid that your….our daughter, Hope, just couldn't take the pain of it. She gave into her injuries yesterday morning…Kari, what I am trying to say is that Hope is dead, honey. She died."  
  
Disbelief, anger, pain, and a hundred other emotions flooded Kari's normal composed features as she cried out her grief.  
  
"I want to see her, I want to see my baby." Kari sobbed, clutching at Davis's hands.  
  
Not realizing she would want to and cursing himself for not thinking of it, he shook his head at her, a lie forming in his mind.  
  
"You can't, honey, she's gone. The funeral is being planned and her body is not what it would look like for you to want to see her, just remember her as she was. How vibrant and alive she was."  
  
Kari jerked her hands from him, pulling back into her blankets and pillows.  
  
"Leave me alone." She whispered.  
  
Davis nodded with a look of sadness on his face, closing the door behind him he genuinely grinned. Now all that was left to do was make sure the rest of the family believed him and that the funeral was quick and no one was allowed to see her body. That way no one would contest it.   
  
Kari was his. Takeru and Hope were gone from this and everything was perfect again. Just like it was supposed to be.  
  
~ * ~  
  
T.K. went to the room, decorated in pink with stuffed animals everywhere. He saw a little girl sleeping, her hair just washed from being bandaged up for so long. It was just to her shoulders light brown with gold in it, as her eyes fluttered open she looked at him.  
  
"Who are you?" came Hope's nine-year-old voice.  
  
"I'm your dad, Hope, you're real dad."  
  
"The man that mom talks about?"  
  
"She told you about me?" T.K. asked with genuine surprise.  
  
"Davis, I never called him Dad, didn't seem like my dad to me, not the way a Dad was supposed to be to me, anyway."  
  
"Are you okay with that?"  
  
"Yeah," Hope looked at his closer, "you have my eyes. Always thought my dad would have my eyes."  
  
"Or you have mine." T.K. gently told her.  
  
"Where's mom?"  
  
"Your mom? Well," T.K. sighed, realizing there was no better way to do this, "she tried to hurt you, really hurt you, so I have come to take you home with me."  
  
"Mom tried to hurt me?"  
  
T.K. noticed she touched her head.  
  
"Don't you remember what happened?"  
  
"No," Hope winced at the pain, "Doctor said I blocked it out or something like that."  
  
"Maybe it's for the best."  
  
Hope looked at him. He was kind, nice, and looked like her. Things a dad should be. Her mom tried to hurt her? That kind of made sense, her mom was acting weird around her lately and it worried her.   
  
"What about Kyle and Derek? My brothers?"  
  
"There is a brother you have that you've never met that lives with me." T.K. said, trying to change the subject realizing there was no answer for her question at the moment.  
  
"Another brother? Couldn't you have a girl?" Hope asked with a teasing smile.  
  
"Just wait, angel, one of these days you'll learn that having big brothers aren't such a bad thing."  
  
  
~ * ~  
  
The funeral took place a week later; Kari was out of the hospital surrounded by family and friends minus the Ishida and Takaishi clan. Looking at the tombstone of her daughter, then at her husband she wondered if Hope was truly dead and something inside her died at the thought.   
  
Both Kyle and Derek were hurt by the news, both had adored her even if they teased her. Davis acted every ounce the perfect grieving along side his family spouse while inside he was grinning.  
  
Yolei stood not too far away, her arm linked with her husband Ken's.   
  
"You've been acting weird, Yolei. Is something the matter?"  
  
"My best friend's daughter just died," Yolei explained, "but I think that something is going on that someone isn't telling us."  
  
To Be Continued……..  
~ * ~ * ~ *  
  
So, what do you think? Is it terribly evil of me to make Davis so evil? Well, what can I say if the shoe fits….*cough. I'll try to have the next part up ASAP. Did you like it? Hate it? Please review. I want to know.  
  
Written: April 10, 2001  



End file.
